The Angel

by Mark Dawson

  Aamir was bustled onto the escalator. He was breathing quickly, and his pulse was racing.

  He looked for Bashir and couldn’t see him, even as they ascended. He gazed at the others: the long queue of people going down to the platforms on his left, the others heading up to the surface with him. Men and women and children. A woman staring at the screen of her cell phone. A man reading a book on a Kindle. A couple balancing a child’s stroller between them. A pretty blonde girl, not that much younger than him, a leather satchel hung over her shoulder.

  No.

  He couldn’t do it.

  He turned back, closed his eyes and waited for the escalator to deliver him to the surface.

  Hakeem’s train had rolled into the station five minutes before Aamir’s. That was what they had planned. He needed time to get into position. The rush hour was long since ended, but this was a busy station. He had seen Bashir get onto the train, but he had lost sight of Aamir in the scrum at Kings Cross. He was a little concerned about the young brother. It had been harder to persuade him that what they were going to do this morning was necessary. Mohammed had worked on Aamir; Hakeem thought that the young recruit could be relied upon, but he wasn’t as certain about Aamir as he was about Bashir.

  Hakeem looked at the oblivious men and women around him. They were like cattle. They had no idea what was about to happen.

  It gave him a wild thrill of excitement.

  He walked from the platform into the vestibule that accommodated the escalators. He separated himself from the throng and found a place where he could wait without being too obvious about it. The plan called for him to stay here until Aamir had detonated his bomb. The boy would kill and maim dozens of the infidels in the confined space of the train carriage. His bomb would also cause panic and send hundreds of them dashing headlong to where he, Hakeem, would be waiting for them. He would press himself into the middle of the crush and close his eyes. He would pray to Allah that he would kill as many of them as he could.

  He looked at his watch just as he heard the sound of the next train easing into the station.

  This must be Aamir.

  Not long.

  Moments.

  He knew this was a martyrdom operation and that he wouldn’t live beyond this day. He knew his span on this Earth could be measured in minutes now. Seconds. He was content with that. He was clear-headed and calm, prepared to sacrifice himself to the greater good. His blood would serve the caliphate, and the scripture was clear and unequivocal: he would earn a place in Paradise for his work.

  He heard the sound of the train’s doors closing.

  Now?

  The train accelerated.

  He looked at his watch.

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  No explosion.

  He didn’t understand what was happening.

  Aamir should have been here by now.

  He was trying to think what to do when he saw the boy on the escalator above him. His mouth fell open. Aamir still had his rucksack over his shoulder. He was clutching the bag to his chest as if it was something precious.

  He wanted to call out – ‘Aamir!’ – but he knew that he couldn’t draw attention to himself.

  Aamir was going to the surface. He had failed. He had lost his nerve and failed.

  Once again he heard the scripture that Alam Hussain had made him memorise.

  O Prophet, rouse the believers to fight. If there are twenty among you, patient and persevering, they will vanquish two hundred; if there are a hundred, then they will slaughter a thousand unbelievers, for the infidels are a people devoid of understanding.

  Aamir might fail.

  But he would not.

  He took a step away from the wall and then another, pushing his way into the crowd of people waiting to get onto the escalator. He remembered everything that the imam had said, and everything that Mohammed had said after that. He closed his eyes, ignoring the angry words as he bumped into men and women. He put his hand into his pocket and felt the trigger. He grasped the switch and felt its sharp edge press into the flesh of his thumb.

  ‘Allahu akbar,’ he yelled. ‘Allahu akbar. Allahu—’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Allahu akbar. Allahu—’

  Isabella heard the chant as the doors of the carriage closed behind her. She was adjacent to the passageway that led through to the escalators, and she was looking out into it as the train slowly eased into motion. The angle changed and her attention was snagged by a poster for a new film she had been thinking of seeing.

  Then came the explosion.

  Isabella saw a bright white light that seemed to go on for seconds, and then she heard a dull crump. It was loud, but blunt. It was like a thud, a physical sensation that she could feel passing through her body. She saw a gout of smoke punch out of the passageway and onto the platform. At the same time, the glass screen doors shattered and the side of the carriage was peppered with tiny pieces of debris that rang out loudly. A jagged crack appeared in the window, and further down the carriage an entire pane shattered and fell onto the passengers.

  The train jerked to a sudden stop.

  There was silence for a moment, and then came the sound of screaming from the platform and the vestibule beyond. One of the women in the carriage had been lacerated by the falling glass, and as the other passengers saw the blood that was running down from her scalp, some of them started to scream, too.

  The lights on the platform flickered and died.

  Smoke drifted in through the smashed window.

  The lights in the carriage winked out, too, and in an instant it became completely black.

  The smoke was acrid; she heard people retching and coughing.

  The carriage lights came on again. A man was stumbling along the platform. Isabella looked at him and saw that he had no face, just a mask of blood and skin that looked like masticated steak.

  A male passenger yanked down the handle of the carriage’s intercom and tried to speak to the driver.

  Other men and women appeared on the platform. Their faces were blackened with soot and dirt and blood, and their clothes were torn and shredded. The whites of their wide eyes stood out against the muck on their skin.

  A man tried to wrestle the doors open. He managed to part them a crack and call for help. Two others pushed through the scrum and tried to force them all the way open. She was buffeted to the side, and as she put her weight on her right foot, she felt the crunching of broken glass beneath it.

  The lights flickered and died for a second time. A shower of sparks drifted down from the ceiling to the floor of the platform. It was incongruously beautiful.

  The screaming got louder.

  ‘Allahu Akbar. Allahu—’

  Aamir was at the top of the escalator when he heard Hakeem’s strident chant. His call was enveloped by the crashing roar of the bomb as it exploded in the vestibule below him. It was a loud, sudden boom, closely followed by a pressure wave that pulsed up the shaft and flattened everyone in its wake. It lifted Aamir up and tossed him, dropping him on his front, the rucksack beneath him. The rumble was followed by the sound of shrapnel striking against the concrete walls of the shaft and the metal treads of the escalator. The sound was like a whoosh, the noise that a very strong wind might make. It almost felt electrical, and his hair stood up on end.

  There came a sudden silence. Aamir heard the sound of his own breathing, in and out, ragged and on the edge of panic, and then came the shrieks and screams. The horror. Smoke coursed out of the mouth of the shaft, black and choking, and Aamir felt it sting his eyes.

  Aamir shook the rucksack from his shoulders and left it on the floor as he scrambled to his feet.

  He forgot about it and ran.

  He crashed into a large man in a London Underground uniform. He was old, his kindly face absorbed with shock and horror. The man was trying to forge a path through the on-rushers so that he could get to the escalators.

  Aamir looked up and saw th
e white of daylight from the station exits.

  He had to get outside.

  Aamir ran to the gate line, bumped and baulked by the others around him. The gates were all open, and he squeezed through, climbed the steps and emerged into the bright sunlight. He looked up. Big Ben stretched overhead, and behind it, the towers and crenellations of the Palace of Westminster. A single Union Jack flew from a flagpole atop one of the towers. The pennant hung down, rustling in the negligible wind.

  Aamir looked across the road and saw Bashir opposite the exit to the station, crossing the road and heading right at him. Bashir looked back at him for a moment, confusion quickly replaced by anger.

  ‘Stop!’

  Aamir saw the bulk of his rucksack and knew what was about to happen.

  He ran.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Pope, McNair and Snow stepped out of the office. The street was shaded by the tall shoulders of the buildings on either side, but as they walked on, they passed into the sunshine that shimmered down onto Whitehall.

  He had said too much. He had known that he would if they pressed the wrong buttons. He had promised himself that he would be diplomatic, hold his tongue and ignore all the provocation that he knew was coming his way, but he just couldn’t. He had no respect for any of those people. They pronounced and opined without any idea of what it was that the men and women under his command did for their country.

  He had been an active member of the Group until his predecessor had gone rogue. He had more than his own share of kills, and the price he had paid for each one of them was high. He had always tried to take his own feelings out of the equation. He had been a weapon. Someone else chose the target and aimed the weapon. He simply carried out his orders and then went back to his family and tried to forget about them. That had been his policy, although, of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. He had probably handled it better than John Milton, but what did that say about him? Milton had wrestled with his demons for years, tried to drown them in drink, and eventually he had decided that the only way he could deal with them was to take himself as far away from London and his old life as he could. Milton was out, and good luck to him. Pope found that he wished he could join him.

  They ambled down Whitehall. Snow was smoking a cigarette, his second, sucking down the tobacco with greedy gulps. He smoked compulsively, especially when he was irritated, and he certainly had grounds for irritation now.

  ‘Fuckers,’ McNair said.

  ‘I know,’ Pope said.

  ‘They have no idea. Not the first clue.’

  ‘It’s not over yet. Someone will see sense.’

  He said it, but he didn’t really believe it. He knew that there would have to be a scapegoat for what had happened to Fèlix Rubió. A bloodletting was inevitable. It should have been the police and the spooks for the faulty intelligence, but Group Fifteen was an easier target. There would be an inquest to find out what had happened, and far better for the agency to be disbanded and dispersed, to forestall the possibility that a light might be shone on the murky, grubby world in which they operated. Similar steps were taken after Bloody Sunday. The men involved were scattered far and wide to prevent the truth from emerging. The playbook hadn’t changed in forty years. It was still the obvious response. It was as craven and short-sighted now as it had been then, but Pope was long enough in the tooth not to be surprised by such things.

  He grimaced again and wished, for the second time, that he had held his tongue.

  Snow noticed his expression. ‘Forget it, sir. You did what you could.’

  ‘At least they know how you feel about it now,’ McNair added.

  Pope allowed himself a small smile in response.

  They passed The Red Lion pub, Derby Gate and then St Stephen’s Tavern. Snow finished the cigarette and immediately lit a third. Pope found himself wondering what to do for the rest of the afternoon. He had never been suspended before, and he realised, with a rueful grin, he had no idea what that meant in practical terms. Should he go home? No, he thought. There were people with whom he needed to discuss the morning’s events. But where should he do that? What did suspension mean? Was he supposed to go back to their building on the river, make his calls and then wait for further orders? Was he supposed to go home?

  They joined the scrum of pedestrians at the junction of Bridge Street and Whitehall. He looked up at Elizabeth Tower. It rose up with a stately rhythm, higher and higher, and then there came the iconic clock face, picked out as a giant rose, its petals fringed with gold. There were medieval windows above that and then the dark slate roof, its greyness relieved by delicate windows framed in gold leaf. Finally came a rush of gold to the higher roof that curved gracefully upwards to a fairy-tale spire topped with a crown, flowers and a cross.

  It was a minute before midday. The traffic lights changed in their favour just as the minute hand ticked over to an upright position and the famous chimes pealed out. The tune was that of the Cambridge Chimes, based on violin phrases from Handel’s Messiah.

  The Chimes finished, and Pope waited for the first strike of the hour bell.

  The detonation came from Bridge Street, in the direction of the river. It was a deep, guttural boom, accompanied by a tremor that passed beneath his feet. Pope knew it was a bomb immediately. The blast had been very slightly muffled. It had come from the direction of the Underground station. He ran toward the entrance, Snow and McNair hard on his heels, just as a huge cloud of dust and smoke poured out and billowed up into the bright afternoon.

  He saw the man on the other side of the street. Most people were standing around, confused and befuddled. They were slack-jawed, their eyes black and dazed. But this man was moving. He was dressed in black and carrying, with obvious effort, a rucksack that he wore on his back.

  Pope knew how to spot a suicide bomber. He knew the playbook after an attack, too. He had served in theatres where suicide bombings were often a daily occurrence: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Israel. The first blast was often diversionary. Lethal, yes. Deadly. But it was designed to funnel as many targets as possible into a killing zone where they could be attacked by a bigger secondary explosion. The jihadis did it with IEDs, using one to herd soldiers and civilians into a position where the second bomb could do serious damage.

  The man with the rucksack wasn’t standing still. He wasn’t confused. He was walking with a determined stride, right into the middle of the crowd.

  ‘No!’ Pope yelled.

  The man reached into his pocket.

  ‘Bomb! Run!’

  Chapter Fifteen

  A bright yellow light, seemingly everywhere, and then Pope was lifted, twisted and flung to the ground. There was the deafening crack of a hideous explosion, and Pope was pummelled by a bolt of boiling air which dented his cheeks and stomach as if they had been made of cardboard. He felt the fierce lashing of debris, hot slugs that scored burning tracks across his cheeks and forehead and the back of his hands. He stayed there on his back, the breath sucked out of his lungs by the retreating pressure. He opened his eyes, blinking hard. The sun seemed to quiver overhead, and then it disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

  There was a moment of unearthly silence, broken only by the music of broken glass, the creaking of metal, the patter of falling debris.

  Then the screaming started.

  He looked and tried to clear his head. The blast had thrown him fully fifteen feet and deposited him against the side of a black cab that had stopped in the middle of the road. The mass of people who had retreated from the first blast inside the station were not there any longer. He felt something fall on his face, and when he yanked it away, he found it was a piece of yellow fabric, a dress maybe, now soaked in blood. A gory shower of flesh and more bloody clothing fell on him and around him, mingled with fragments of glass and concrete. Last of all came pieces of paper sucked from the offices in the buildings above the station, falling gently to Earth like graceful autumn leaves. There came the unmistakeable smell of
roast pork. Once you had experienced it, you could never forget it. It was the smell of burning flesh.

  The road was ruined for fifty yards in both directions. There were hundreds of windows in the sand-coloured limestone walls of the Palace, and they had all been blown in. Glass rained down. A man bumped into him and fell to the ground. People were running all around him, screaming and crying. A bus that had been passing had swerved and crashed into the railings. A dump truck had slammed into the back of the bus. The trees that stood between the high railings and the flanks of the building had all been denuded of their leaves and now they stood naked and at crooked angles. The road itself was no more than a smoking crater. There were red smears on the tarmac and the pavements and the walls of the buildings. An inky black cloud mushroomed overhead, obscuring the clock tower and the buildings that faced it. The smell of cordite was everywhere. And it was cordite, Pope knew. This wasn’t a homemade bomb. This wasn’t hydrogen peroxide from boiled-down hair products. It wasn’t HMTD from hexamine tablets and citrus acid. This smelled like military-grade explosive.

  ‘Control?’

  It was Snow.

  ‘I’m here.’

  Number Twelve emerged from the smoke. He was covered in ash and soot. He had been a little closer to the seat of the explosion than Pope, and the blast had ripped his jacket from his back and torn his shirt. He wore his pistol in a shoulder holster, and Pope watched as his hand flicked up to it and yanked it free. It made him think of his own Sig Sauer, and he was grateful as his fingers found that it was still there, too.

  ‘Two explosions,’ Pope said, although he knew that Snow would be aware of that. ‘First one in the station, second one just outside it.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Snow said.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. You?’

  ‘Cuts and bruises.’

  ‘Number Three?’

  ‘I’m here,’ McNair said. He was on the ground, ten feet away, carefully pushing to his feet.